"Commentary from P.M. Carpenter"

February 28, 2018

From People magazine — which, I assure you, I don't read; I discovered this piece on a news aggregator — a perfectly dreadful, Mike Huckabeelike entry:

There’s only one thing that could make Oprah Winfrey run for president in 2020.

Amid calls for her to consider a run for the White House — from fans as well as her closest friends — "I went into prayer," she tells PEOPLE in the magazine’s new cover story. "'God, if you think I’m supposed to run, you gotta tell me, and it has to be so clear that not even I can miss it.' And I haven’t gotten that."

Neither did Huckabee nor any of the dozens of other sanctimonious, sacrilegious Republican charlatans who, over the years, have proclaimed their candidacies to be merely The Will of God — thus they had to run (and invariably lost, which made either them or God a liar). Offhand I can't think of any modern-era Democrat who used the Almighty as a promotional prop. Should Oprah go either psychotic or demagogic, she would invalidate that honorable claim.

Stick to the temporal, Ms. Winfrey. Close your ears to schizophrenic or political siren-song wails. Besides, God has better things to do than to try to guide seven billion people who've had centuries to learn how to behave like decent human beings — and still don't have the hang of it. I suspect the Lord follows the Kantian school of pedagogy: Teach to the middle; the upper species don't need His guidance, and the lower ones — such as us — are too hopelessly stupid to grasp it.

In reading about the charitably called congressional "testimony" of Hope Hicks, the 29-year-old model, fashion-line promoter and White House communications director, it's remarkably easy to imagine the entire affair taking place in a Graham Greene novel set in the squalid corruption of some 1950s banana republic.

This is not the America in which I grew up — and yet, it is.

"[Hicks] told House investigators on Tuesday that her work for President Trump, who has a reputation for exaggerations and outright falsehoods, had occasionally required her to tell white lies" — necessarily meaning, in the fashion of her boss, outright falsehoods. But, glory be, "after extended consultation with her lawyers" she came to the liberating realization that "she had not lied about matters material to the investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible links to Trump associates."

It is well known, however, that Hicks was later integral to the obstruction-of-justice sacking of FBI Director James Comey and the writing of the outright falsehood about Donald Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort's Trump Tower collusion with shady Russians. Hicks simply "refused to answer questions about both," reports the Times. Well, isn't that precious.

Lawmakers present said "she did not formally invoke executive privilege." This makes sense, since Ms. Hicks can't invoke executive privilege. Only the president can do that. But, no matter. The president need not invoke executive privilege, since this utterly useless Republican Congress permits the president's lickspittles to set the parameters of what questions shall be answered.

Subpoenas, contempt of Congress citations and the jailing of uncooperative witnesses are for political opponents — not members of the reigning regime.

Politico broke the story, whose lede is both indisputable and very much open to question: "Presidential son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner has had his security clearance downgraded — a move that will prevent him from viewing many of the sensitive documents to which he once had unfettered access."

So Kushner is now fettered, right? "He cannot see the [presidential daily brief], not a chance," a national-security-law expert told Politico, who added that White House officials will tell Kushner: "Here’s what … you no longer have any access to it, and any breach of that would be a serious security violation and a possible criminal issue." Said former State Department official Aaron David Miller to the NY Times: "[Kushner] doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and now he cannot find out," because of his security downgrade.

And that's that. No ambiguity there, right? Kushner is as fettered as a fettered Kushner could be.

But, as with everything in Trumpworld, things do, in fact, get a bit murky. Politico adds that WH Chief of Staff John Kelly "took the rare step last week of issuing a public statement that Kushner would be able to continue his work in the White House unfettered" (italics mine). Kushner's lawyer then told the Times that "as General Kelly himself said, the new clearance policy will not affect Mr. Kushner’s ability to continue to do the very important work he has been assigned by the President" — virtually all of which would require access to the highest levels of secret documents. What's more, notes Politico, "the president has the ability to grant Kushner a permanent clearance," which means the fettered Kushner may not be fettered at all.

Hence the unfettered fettering of the once-unfettered Kushner is rather fettered in terms of unfettered clarity.

Why? Because this is Trumpworld, which was nepotistically corrupt and stupid enough to hire a gangly young know-nothing to achieve world peace, resolve all trade disputes, reform the criminal justice system and reinvent government. Yet the few actual professionals there are in this White House became a trifle concerned, as the Washington Post reports, that Kushner was "'naive and being tricked' in conversations with foreign officials, some of whom said they wanted to deal only with Kushner directly and not more experienced personnel." And why was that? Because the gangly young know-nothing is as sharp a businessman as he is a Metternichian diplomat. He overpaid for a Fifth Ave. property (located, appropriately, at "666"), and in 10 months must repay $1.2 billion of refinanced debt on it. Which is like extortionist catnip to certain foreign powers willing to, ahem, help.

So where does Jared Kushner stand as to security clearance? Who the hell knows — which is also the official White House position on every other matter of policy.

February 27, 2018

Who would you, as president of the United States, send to South Korea amid the most heightened nuclear tensions since the Cuban Missile Crisis? An experienced diplomat or … your daughter, a woman with no training or expertise whatsoever in international relations.

"The decision to send her to South Korea did not sit well with some senior officials in the West Wing, two people familiar with the situation told CNN. The nuclear threat from North Korea and the tensions already boiling across the Korean Peninsula made any US delegation far more than ceremonial….

"[White House Chief of Staff Gen. John] Kelly was advised by those closest to him that it would be a losing battle to oppose Ivanka as the delegation's leader."

The most powerful nation in the world is now a goddamn laughingstock represented by a handful of bumbling, ill-informed amateurs no brighter than the dimwitted voters who put the primary bumbler in charge.

I knew it, I just knew the second I saw the headline, "Roy Moore Endorses in Missouri Senate Race," who the endorsee would be:

"[Roy] Moore, who was defeated after multiple women accused him of making sexual advances toward them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s, has put his weight behind Courtland Sykes, a Navy veteran who has called feminists 'she-devils' and said he would not want daughters who were 'career-obsessed banshees.'"

A month ago to the day, I wrote about Mr. Sykes. "Before it became evident that Trump had lost his mind," I mused, "I kept thinking that someday he would burst out of a cake and declare his entire act a charade — a parody meant to expose the right's immeasurable insanity; living proof that the Republican base would swallow anything, no matter how nuts. Perhaps that is Mr. Sykes' plan. Because it's really hard to see his act as anything but a parody. Because it's that bughouse." The above link will take you to his bughouse campaign video I posted that day. I especially like the "revolving" Courtland Sykes, who, according to the lecherous, statutory rapist Roy Moore,

"is a man of impeccable character, courage, and Christian faith. We need men like Courtland Sykes in the Senate of the United States, a leader who will not only say what is right, but also a leader who will do what is right!"

One would think a U.S. Senate candidate would look on an endorsement by Moore as something akin to a severe case of leprosy. Not Sykes, no sir. "After his endorsement, Moore emailed his supporters with a message from Sykes," reports the Washington Post, "who argued that the same forces that opposed Moore would now oppose him. 'This is war — and war needs warriors who can inflict political war casualties on the left — mean, deadly political damage they won’t recover from." Sykes is one of those military veterans — he was a low-ranking, Navy intelligence analyst — who was never threatened by the infliction of "deadly damage," thus he prides himself on deploying the false tough-guy gibberish of a braggart. If he had wanted to face the real and bloody realities of war, he would have become an infantryman.

Missouri is the state of my birth and upbringing. I regret that, since I left it in the 1990s, it has gone crazy. The "Show-Me" state voted for Trump by nearly 60 percent, and in 2012 its Republican challenger to Sen. Claire McCaskill was "legitimate rape" Todd Akin. Missouri is an upside-down Pennsylvania, once famously described as Pittsburgh and Philadelphia on the bottom sides, and Alabama in the middle. In Missouri, the civilized districts (Kansas City and St. Louis) are on the upper sides; it is Alabama everywhere else. (And non-Missourian activist Democrats plaintively wonder why Democratic Sen. McCaskill isn't a flaming progressive?)

I offer this background only to warn that since Missourian Courtland Sykes is as crazy as his fellow Alabamians, I wouldn't rule out an upset.

"Mueller is the best of America; Trump the worst. All you need to know about the diseased state of today’s Republican Party is that it reviles Mueller and reveres Trump. Hitherto the champions of personal responsibility and rectitude, Republicans have embraced a culture of self-indulgence that they denounced when it was symbolized by Trump’s fellow draft-dodger Bill Clinton. This shift in the tectonic plates of the culture may long outlast the current administration."

What especially intrigues is that Boot transcends the tectonic shifts in the Republican Party by referencing instead the broader "culture"; he uses both men as archetypal metaphors, Mueller as the good America and Trump as its Mr. Hyde. Both have always been with us, but there's no denying that in 2016, our worst angels got the better of us. They turned out to vote while far too many decent Americans stayed home, indifferent to the consequences..

To address Boot's speculation that this miserable cultural circumstance may long outlast the current administration, another may is in order. It may be that the worst of America — Trump, Trumpism, the Trumpeteers — had to haul those decent but indifferent Americans to this administration's rock bottom before the decent could finally appreciate that civic involvement, voting, is the simplest, least time-consuming act of self-preservation. It may be that 2018 and 2020 will see record turnouts, that a whole generation of America will sublimely grasp the concept of small-r republicanism, and then it just may be that in the long run, Donald J. Trump will be the best thing that ever happened to modern America.

In the mind of President Walter Mitty, he has passed the test. "You don’t know" about your grit "until you test it," he said to the nation's governors yesterday at a White House gathering. So test it he did — in his mind. "I really believe I’d run in" and … tackle the shooter? … "even if I didn’t have a weapon," he assured them. There, in the State Dining Room, stood the Hollywood personas of Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, all in one presidential package.

But again, this heroism had to play out strictly in President Mitty's mind, since in real life, Cadet Bone Spurs has been somewhat less than courageous. During the Vietnam war, he requested and received five deferments from the draft, one for that eponymous ailment — although, notes the Washington Post, "the problem was not severe enough to prevent him from playing sports such as football, tennis and golf." In those troubled times, Master Mitty possessed his own idea of valor, telling radio host Howard Stern, years later, that averting sexually transmitted diseases was his "personal Vietnam…. I feel like a great and very brave soldier." He also once told Stern of his bold reaction to the sight of an octogenarian falling and bleeding at a Mar-a-Lago event: "I said, 'Oh my God, that’s disgusting,' and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him."

At a 2016 campaign stop in Dayton, Ohio, a man jumped a barrier and charged in Trump's direction, whereupon Trump "looked nervously behind him and grabbed and started to duck behind his lectern." Trump then transformed into Mitty, telling the crowd, "I was ready for him, but it’s much easier if the cops do it."

Such daring was again on display yesterday, and not only in Mitty's stirring revelation that in Parkland, Florida he would have "run in," weaponless, and done, well, something or other. Mitty lectured the cowardly governors, "You guys — half of you are so afraid of the N.R.A. There’s nothing to be afraid of. And you know what? If they’re not with you, we have to fight them every once in a while." Indeed, Trump showed them how it is done. In his White House remarks, he promptly "dropped any mention of raising the age required to purchase a rifle to 21 from 18," since the N.R.A. opposes the measure.

He also characteristically removed himself from any sane leadership (i.e., he only advocated the truly crackpot notion of arming first grade teachers with 9mm Berettas.) In its place, he promised the governors that the "great people" at the N.R.A. (such as the clinically paranoid Wayne LaPierre and slitheringly vile Dana Loesch) would "do something" about mitigating America's mass slaughters incurred, in large part, by the N.R.A.'s incurable insanity. In addition, Trump "is waiting to see what Congress comes up with," as spokesharpy Sarah Huckabee Sanders related.

He did, however, propose one sensible idea. As the NY Times reports, "Trump lamented a period in history when he said mentally unstable people who had not yet committed a crime could be committed to a mental hospital if it were clear they were acting like a 'boiler ready to explode.'" This stimulated my memory banks. Did I not once ponder his boiler instability? I delved into my archives, and yes, there it was, from June of last year: "His state of mind? Look again at the above portrait. There you will see a trollish neurotic and bloated windbag that's about to blow." Preemptive institutionalization? I'd say he was on to something — at least for one American.

In the meantime, President Mitty is free to run loose, recounting his imaginary exploits of gallantry and grit. We always think there is no way this tormented imbecile can drag himself any lower, or degrade the United States's image any sharper. But, he always finds a way.

February 26, 2018

"We’re going to have [health] insurance for everybody. There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us" … "I firmly believe that nobody will be worse off financially" … "We don't want anyone who currently has insurance to not have insurance" … "I am going to take care of everybody" … "Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now."

Today, Trump told a meeting of governors he would have stopped the Parkland school shooting had he been an officer on the scene. Indeed, he would have charged the shooter if he had no weapon: "I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon."

I am increasingly puzzled as to why disgruntled conservative intellectuals don't get off their disaffected rear ends and ideate the formation of a third party — an organized "Resistance" of the right. Every day I read wounded howls of protest from the immensely alienated — those avid opponents of the Trumpification of their former party — whose critiques of modern Republicanism are almost indistinguishable from leftist polemics. Separately, their voices are insightful but impotent; collectively, perhaps they could forge some power by drawing the rank-and-file disaffected to their side.

I'm thinking of notable conservative voices such as those of David Frum, Jennifer Rubin, George Will, Michael Gerson, Andrew Sullivan and others who have relentlessly inveighed against the madness of Trumpism. Their protests could be said to suffer from what the left is so often criticized for: ardent anti-Trumpism in the absence of a broad, coherent, positive program. While their alternatives are rare, their indignation is daily. But I would remind critics of the left that it's not our job to formulate a constructive conservative platform. That's the responsibility of the NeverTrumpers, and that much should be obvious.

This weekend, two others of the NeverTrump camp bleated their disaffection from their former mates: columnists Mona Charen and Max Boot. Charen's was far more publicized; her pissed-off Saturday performance at the Bedlam of CPAC was live — and extraordinarily livid. Today she has reiterated, in the NY Times, her unhappiness, although it's mixed with some hope. "What happened to me at CPAC is the perfect illustration of the collective experience of a whole swath of conservatives since Donald Trump became the Republican nominee," she writes. "Politicians, activists and intellectuals have succumbed with numbing regularity, betraying every principle they once claimed to uphold. But there remains a vigorous remnant of dissenters." A "whole swath" and a "vigorous remnant" — therein is the hope.

Boot's cri de coeur is, let's say, more entertaining than Charen's, in that he mostly just pinpoints the laughable, infantile mindset of Trumpist Republicanism. First, he objects to the distorted use of a traditional word. "Being conservative used to be central to my identity. But now, frankly, I don’t give a damn. I prefer to think of myself as a classical liberal, because 'conservative' has become practically synonymous with 'Trump lackey.'" Things then get quite amusing, as he perfectly reflects on modern conservatism's puerile turn. Its "philosophy" is now this, and little more: "One way to be effective as a conservative is to figure out what annoys and disturbs liberals the most, and then keep doing it…. Say anything to 'trigger' the 'libtards' and 'snowflakes.' The dumber and more offensive, the better."

Why do I, as a democratic socialist, give a damn that Mr. Boot can no longer honorably identify with conservatism? Because conservatism, once housed in the Republican Party, is essential to the American political tradition; essential, that is, to our two-party system. And now it "is dead," observes E.J. Dionne this morning in a perceptive political obituary. "It is time to read last rites over the American conservative movement," he affirms, for "after years of drifting steadily toward extreme positions, conservatism [has been] replaced by a far right that has the Republican Party under its thumb." Its new identity is what the inimitable Richard Hofstadter labeled "pseudoconservatism" — an extremist, "revolutionary creed" (in Dionne's words) that is the "antithesis" of Burkeanism, even Buckleyism, of "tweeds and a good scotch." It is the intellectually pulseless, incoherent persuasion of the rabble.

A healthy, rational conservatism is needed. A useful metaphor for this necessity is the game of chess. If liberalism plays against nothing but the imbecility of modern conservatism, it will become (if it hasn't already) careless and unimaginative. That's why I'm disappointed that the Charens, the Boots and the Frums have failed to form a positive, organized alternative to the wretchedness of Trumpism-cum-Republicanism. If they were to do so, then liberals would have someone worth arguing with, instead of arguing with idiots.

February 25, 2018

At the heart of Devin Nunes' fulminations about the 2016 Carter Page FISA warrant is that the FBI and Department of Justice deceived (for reasons that remain unclear) the four-member court as to motive. America's highest law enforcement entities, says Nunes, furtively concealed the fact that, in pursuing a warrant against Page (and thus the Trump campaign), a partisan purpose was afoot.

At the heart of the Democratic memo rebutting Nunes is something more dispositive than opinion, called counter-proof. From the surveillance application, as quoted in the memo: "The FBI speculates that the U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit candidate #1’s campaign." In other words, a partisan purpose was indeed afoot; in politics, it usually is.

Now, let's think. What political operation in 2016 would have been looking to "discredit candidate #1"? That being Trump. Well hell that's a tough call. But I rather think those worldly judges, in approving the warrant, probably determined it was Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. And with that — straight from the surveillance application itself — a dagger was thrust into the heart of Devin Nunes and Donald Trump's fulminations.

All this, we already knew. What I still marvel at, though, is the Baghdad Bobism2 of the Trump/Nunes rhetorical counteroffensives. "We actually wanted this out," said Nunes yesterday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The Nunes-disproving memo is "clear evidence that the Democrats are not only covering this up, but they’re also colluding with parts of the government to cover this up," he added. Those government "parts" are an FBI director and attorney general appointed by Trump.

There is one other interpretation, which was tweeted by surveillance-expert Julian Sanchez, of the libertarian Cato Institute: "This is a pretty thorough demolition of Nunes’ insinuations of impropriety by FBI/DOJ." The Washington Post's Dave Weigel notes with no little irony that at the end of his CPAC interview, Nunes "stood to receive the American Conservative Union’s Defender of Freedom Award, conferred on him because of his 'lonely pursuit of truth on behalf of the American people.'" The indispensable website Lawfare notes another irony: "The first important — and, we should add, hilarious — aspect of the [Democratic memo] is its claim that the guy who brought us the 'unmasking scandal' is now upset, at least in this instance, about the absence of unmasking."

And then came Baghdad Bob2 himself, from — where else? — Twitter, aiming his humbug at his ill-informed base and none others. "The Democrat memo response on government surveillance abuses is a total political and legal BUST. Just confirms all of the terrible things that were done. SO ILLEGAL!" And, "Dem Memo: FBI did not disclose who the clients were - the Clinton Campaign and the DNC. Wow!" For anyone with so much as a cursory knowledge of the Steele/FISA affair, "Wow!" is, while not exceedingly articulate, a rather perfect reaction to Trump's barefaced deceptions.

Even more marvel-worthy was this, astutely picked up by evil CNN's evil Brian Stelter.

In fact he did. Here's Trump's tweet:

Yes, it's a marvel, this Trumpist duplicity. Yet, there's a far more apposite word for it. It's sickening, just sickening, to know that U.S. leadership had descended to the reality-expunging level of a Vladimir Putin or Hugo Chávez. In the 231-year stead of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama, we now have a two-bit, tinhorn, ethically hollow scoundrel at the helm. And a Republican Congress to match.

Yesterday, the vaudevillian absurdities just kept rolling at that annual convocation of clinical zaniness, CPAC.

The apprentice-celebrity star of the show was of course Trump, who delivered the day's most laughable one-liner: that he had pulled off "the most successful first year in the history of the presidency.” In his defense I must say that that claim would be true, if it were true. Reality, however, would disagree. In fact his incredibly successful first year included zero accomplishments by Trump himself: the tax cut — the only major piece of legislation to come out of 2017 — was the exclusive creature of the Republican Congress, the seating of Neil Gorsuch on the supreme bench was the exclusive thuggery of Mitch McConnell, and the healthy economy was the near exclusive achievement of President Barack Obama.

Trump did, however, showcase his unequaled vileness by mocking war hero and dying senator John McCain. "Remember, one person walked into a room when he was supposed to [vote] this way … and he went [another] way…. Boy, oh, boy. Who was that? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t want to be controversial, so I won’t use his name, okay?" What a sick, vindictive, infantile jackass is Trump. The one upside is that when his time comes, we'll all be ethically free — even ethically obligated — to be just as cold-blooded.

The runner-up in yesterday's clinical zaniness was Sen. Ted Cruz, who remarked, "If you set aside the noise and the political circus" — you know, minor stuff, from providing sensitive-intel access to uncleared aides to indictments and the continuing corruption of Trump's "best people" to wrecking democratic norms and undermining American institutions — "and if you focus instead on the substance, I am deeply gratified with what this Republican president, Republican administration and Republican majority have been able to accomplish." Cruz spoke as a Reichstag member would have in 1942: "If you set aside the noise and circus of the Holocaust, the Gestapo, the millions dead, I'm deeply gratified that our Führer has made the trains run on time." (And Trump hasn't even done that.)

The winners in the category of belly-laugh paranoia and free-floating pettiness were Wayne LaPierre and second NRA banana Dana Loesch. LaPierre went full Joe McCarthy, seeing "European-style socialists bearing down upon us" from every angle, plotting a "captive society" and reordering the "fundamental concept of moral behavior," such as making it unproblematic for a deranged teenager to slaughter more than a dozen schoolmates. Who is behind this 21st-century dystopian plot? Dana Milbank kept track: George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, the FBI, the Justice Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the intelligence agencies, Democrats, the media, Hollywood, universities, Black Lives Matter, those always wicked elites and … Keith Ellison. Ms. Loesch, added Milbank, incited the audience to hiss at reporters present, charging that "many in the legacy media love mass shootings" because "crying white mothers are ratings gold." A KKK rally looks like an Oxford seminar compared to LaPierre-Loesch's bottom-feeding.

The skin crawls when one is so cruelly reminded that these are the imbeciles, jackasses and real-McCoy lunatics running the country. We have no precedent, hence history offers no guide as to the probable aftermath. The only recommendation I have to offer is that the words of the pledge of allegiance be modified in 2021, for the next generation: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all — and heaven forfend that we should ever forget the bone-chilling malignity of the Trump administration."

February 23, 2018

Finally got back on; this time let's hope the technical issues are no more. By now it's too late in the day and I'm too pooped to do much of anything writing-wise, but I did want to post this cartoon, from the NY Daily News' Bill Bramhall, which I found very powerful — and even more true.

Typepad hasn't completely resolved yesterday's technical problems. I managed to get one post up this morning (below) before the latest collapse, and for now, Typepad is back up. I can make no promises about later.

He bows to his generals, he caves to his party, he's led around by Stephen Miller, he grovels before Wayne LaPierre and the N.R.A. They're in charge, not Trump, who said yesterday that "he had spoken with the 'top people' at the N.R.A. … and come away believing that 'they’re ready to do things.'" When it comes to the lives of America's schoolchildren, the N.R.A. acts as the fourth — and most formidable — branch of government. It must be "ready to do things." The would-be authoritarian trembles before the real power: "I don’t think I’ll be going up against" the N.R.A., confessed Trump. Even in the president's exclusive arena of executive orders, his policy, reports the NY Times, is to consider none that might "rile gun control opponents."

On the campaign trail, Trump alone would "fix it" — it being whatever ailed us. In the White House, Trump is a quivering, befuddled, rudderless weakling who couldn't fix his own breakfast.

President Obama took a lot of grief for "leading from behind," as one of his aides unfortunately described it. Whatever it is that Trump is doing, he's doing it from the sidelines. His leadership omits leading in its entirety. From the sidelines, at best he mimics. LaPierre bellowed yesterday that we must "harden our schools" by staffing them with Home Ec teachers packing heat. Minutes later, Trump "us[ed] the term 'harden' more than a dozen times in less than an hour," while endorsing the cretinous idea of arming teachers.

"I don’t want teachers to have guns," clarified Trump. "I want certain highly adept people, people that understand weaponry, guns — if they really have that aptitude," he continued. This, one presumes, would include "adepts" such as Scot Peterson — Stoneman Douglas High school's armed cop who, when the shooting started, "ran to the west side of Building 12 and set up in a defensive position, then did nothing for four minutes until the gunfire stopped." Yet, Peterson's cowardice may have saved lives. Notes the Times' editorial board: "If New York is typical, analyses show that its officers hit their targets only one-third of the time. And during gunfights, when the adrenaline is really pumping, that accuracy can drop to as low as 13 percent." The stray bullets often hit innocent subjects.

But, I guess I just don't understand. "What many people don’t understand, or don’t want to understand, is that Wayne, Chris and the folks who work so hard at the @NRA are Great People and Great American Patriots," tweeted Trump. "They love our Country and will do the right thing." They will do the right thing. The president? He'll sit on the sidelines, waiting to be told what to say and what to do.

So why do I fear this unimaginative patsy so much? I'm afraid his one original, autonomous idea will someday come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

February 22, 2018

The president's defensiveness via this facile counteroffensive is enormously popular in the comment sections of right-wing websites. Upon any outsider's mention of L'Affaire Russe, hordes of Trumpeteers will vomit back Trump's fuller tweet nearly verbatim: "If all of the Russian meddling took place during the Obama Administration, right up to January 20th, why aren’t they the subject of the investigation? Why didn’t Obama do something about the meddling? Why aren’t Dem crimes under investigation?"

Mixed throughout these tedious observations are also numerous references to the outsider being an idiot, a moron, a slow-witted Clinton-lover and the like. I have learned, as an occasional commenter myself (a pastime hobby), that right wingers are simply incapable of expressing an opposing opinion (it's always someone else's, namely Trump's) without saturating their remarks with ad hominems. But, I digress.

There's a straightforward answer to the right's question. President Obama did them a huge, thankless favor by not doing "something about the meddling" while Trump's campaign was in progress. He kept largely silent about it so as not to be seen as meddling himself in the presidential campaign, which would have ignited howls of outrage and protest from the right. In short, Obama did what he believed was the prudent, even honorable, thing to do.

Had he done otherwise — had he indeed done something about the meddling as the presidential campaigns proceeded, just as the right now says he should have done — today we'd be hearing, from the right, how utterly and brutally Nixonian President Obama was in 2016.

Which brings us to the second lesson I've learned in commenting on right-wing sites. You can't win; they always have a stock comeback, in which the other side is entirely at fault.